Asking about family history is usually illegal. Oh. My. Gosh.
United Airlines required post-offer medical examinations for its new hires. Nothing wrong with that -- it's specifically allowed under the Americans with...more
Employer's DEI mandate scores a win. A white guy refused to take his employer's mandatory "unconscious bias" training, and he was fired. He sued the employer for retaliation, his lawsuit was dismissed, and this week an...more
7/12/2024
/ Bias ,
Civil Rights Act ,
Discrimination ,
Diversity ,
Employee Training ,
Insubordination Policy ,
Race Discrimination ,
Retaliation ,
SCOTUS ,
Students for Fair Admissions v Harvard College ,
Termination ,
Title VI ,
Title VII ,
Wage and Hour
Employers who (allegedly) didn't file are being sued. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced on Wednesday that it has filed suit against 15 employers in 11 states and in a variety of industries for failing to...more
What's legal, and what's not? Diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in employment are increasingly being challenged in the courts. How much do you know about the legalities? Take our quiz and find out! This is a hard...more
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission will begin accepting employers’ 2023 Component 1 EEO-1 data starting Tuesday, April 30. The last day to file the data is June 4.
The EEOC anticipates that its Component 1...more
The unconditional offer of reinstatement. Are you perfect? So am I. But I’ve been told that there are people in the world who sometimes make mistakes.
Sometimes employers do things that they think they have a perfect right...more
What takes priority? There was a social media storm this week after a large non-profit organization terminated a volunteer after the volunteer questioned the point of having preferred pronouns in signature blocks.
The woman...more
These steps could help keep you out of trouble.
An employee in a safety-sensitive job who has been diagnosed with cancer is selected for a random drug test. The test result comes back positive for TCHA...more
2/9/2024
/ Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) ,
Cannabis Products ,
Civil Rights Act ,
Department of Transportation (DOT) ,
Documentation ,
Drug Testing ,
Employment Policies ,
Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) ,
Hiring & Firing ,
Marijuana ,
Medical Marijuana ,
Reasonable Accommodation ,
THC ,
Wage and Hour
We gotcher employment law news right here.
The email platform that we use to send out our legal bulletins had issues in the past week, which we did not discover until late Wednesday. While the technical difficulties were...more
Don't shoot from the hip.
Let's say you have an employee who is in Week Six of "employee's own serious health condition" leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act.
Her co-worker comes to you and tells you that the...more
Expect to see more of this.
A judge in Connecticut recently dismissed a lawsuit filed by a 26-year employee who developed early-onset Alzheimer's disease. According to the court's opinion, the employee had performed well...more
With some help from Charles Dickens.
Marlie was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of her burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge...more
12/22/2023
/ CFOs ,
Exempt-Employees ,
Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) ,
Federal Labor Laws ,
Hiring & Firing ,
Hostile Environment ,
Human Resources Professionals ,
Sexual Harassment ,
Threshold Requirements ,
Wage and Hour ,
Willful Violations ,
Working Time Regulations
You won't want to miss this!!! You all probably read respectable news sources. I subscribe to a number of "sober" mainstream publications, but have a sick attraction to the Daily Mail and the New York Post....more
12/8/2023
/ Age Discrimination ,
Complaint Procedures ,
Employment Discrimination ,
Employment Policies ,
Harassment ,
Hiring & Firing ,
Job Applicants ,
Performance Reviews ,
Performance Standards ,
Protected Class ,
Recruitment Policies ,
Termination ,
Wage and Hour
Even if you didn't do it.
The recent proposed Enforcement Guidance on Harassment in the Workplace published by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has some good recommendations for harassment training topics....more
Better to have the courage of your convictions.
I'm sure you've heard of "quiet quitting," when an unhappy employee does the bare minimum to get by and keep drawing a paycheck, but doesn't care much about the job beyond...more
Was that impolite?
Miss Manners (or her kids, who are doing Judith Martin's old column much of the time) have weighed in on some employment law issues lately.
They really need to stick to advising their audience to send...more
That's one way to get employers to allow remote work.
We all know that employers with 15 or more employees are covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act and may have to provide reasonable accommodations to allow...more
I hope this won't ruin your Labor Day weekend.
The employer-unfriendly decisions from the National Labor Relations Board have been coming fast and furious. In honor of the holiday, here's a short recap.
As you probably...more
9/1/2023
/ Bargaining Units ,
Chilling Effect ,
Compensatory Damages ,
Confidentiality Agreements ,
Emotional Distress Damages ,
Employee Handbooks ,
Labor Relations ,
NLRA ,
NLRB ,
Non-Disclosure Agreement ,
Pecuniary Losses ,
Protected Concerted Activity ,
Quickie Election Rules ,
Separation Agreement ,
Unfair Labor Practices ,
Union Elections ,
Unions ,
Wage and Hour
You have an unlikely ally.
A lot of employers are still trying to get their employees to come back to the office, with varying degrees of success.
Once an employee loses the commute, and can work with both feet up, take a...more
It's the law. Did you know that this Monday, August 21, is National Senior Citizens' Day? Neither did I. But it is!
How are you going to spend National Senior Citizens' Day? I was thinking about playing shuffleboard,...more
Inconsistencies were fatal to this employer.
It's a well-established principle in discrimination law that an employer can be done in by "shifting explanations" for actions taken against an applicant or employee.
A recent...more
Not in my opinion.
The following scenario was in this morning's Miss Manners column. You may need a paid subscription to access, but here's the gist:
Employee is 20-something, happily married, and just learned that she is...more
Morals based on a real court decision.
My law partner Jon Yarbrough alerted me to a recent court decision that is full of little gems for employers. I thought I'd break the decision down into "true fables," each with a...more
4/28/2023
/ Adverse Employment Action ,
Disability ,
Employment Contract ,
Good Faith ,
Honest Belief Defense ,
Morals Clauses ,
Protected Activity ,
Reasonable Accommodation ,
Retaliation ,
Sexual Harassment ,
Termination ,
Title IX ,
Wage and Hour
On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in Groff v. DeJoy, a case I blogged about in January. The case is about what standard of "undue hardship" should apply in religious accommodation cases.
Under every...more
4/21/2023
/ Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) ,
Coronavirus/COVID-19 ,
Employer Mandates ,
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) ,
Religious Accommodation ,
Religious Beliefs ,
SCOTUS ,
Title VII ,
Undue Hardship ,
Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USSERA) ,
USPS ,
Vaccinations ,
Wage and Hour
Then again, it may have been that "FU" text I sent the boss.
You can't make this stuff up.
For those of you who think I'm too hard on employers, today is your day. There was an excellent pro-employer decision recently...more